Musical Theatre Studies

Call for Papers

International Conference

SONG, STAGE & SCREEN IV

Interdisciplinary approaches to the musical stage

200-word abstract due June 15

December 3-5, 2009

The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities &

The Department of Theatre

University of Maryland, College Park

The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities and the Department of Theater at the University of Maryland, College Park invite submissions for the fourth annual international and interdisciplinary conference on musical and music theatre. Papers on any topic relating to the intersection of music and theatre or film are welcomed. Suggested topics include:

Collaboration and the creation of the musical

Musical theatre texts

Musical theatre archives

Teaching the musical

Representations of race and gender in the musical

Critical and audience reception of the musical

Please send abtsracts of no more than 200 words to Doug Reside <dreside@umd.edu> by June 15

Song, Stage and Screen is the annual conference of the academic journal, Studies in Musical Theatre, which is published by Intellect Press. Previous Song, Stage and Screen conferences have been held at the University of Portsmouth, UK (2006), University of Leeds, UK (2007), and the Graduate Center of City University of New York (2008). It is expected that a selection of papers from this joint conference will be invited for submission to the journal and publication. This year’s conference is organized by Doug Reside (University of Maryland) and Laura Pollard (University of East Anglia).

Details

The purpose of this conference is to stimulate debate around musical theatre provision in UK higher education. While this is a popular and growing area of study, musical theatre remains something of an afterthought in many institutions, often positioned slightly awkwardly within either a music or drama department.

The initial deadline for proposals is 20 October 2008.

http://www.palatine.ac.uk/events/view/1365/

Oxford is hosting a conference “devoted to an examination of Astaire’s life and legacy” from June 21 to 24, 2008.  Read more here

Michael Garber sends the following:

The complete published proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on the Arts and Humanities are available for free on-line in a downloadable pdf format, here.

The papers published by this interdisciplinary conference offer a valuable resource to researchers of all levels. Among these five-to-ten thousand page documents are several interesting complete papers on musicals (as well as some short abstracts).
Complete papers, in chronological order, include:

• James Gifford. “Introducing Creativity and the Arts into a New Technology-Centered Curriculum: A Report on a Work in Progress.” 2004 Proceedings. (Includes a discussion of using West Side Story as part of this technology-centered curriculum for a new degree program in Web and Media Development.)
• Eleanor M. Johnston. “’Amor Vincit Omnia’: Love in Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Life and Works.” 2004 Proceedings. (A well-focused biographical essay about this composer of film scores, opera, and operetta.)
• Laura Hanson. “The First Modernist Musical: Sondheim’s Company.” 2005 Proceedings. (An analysis of this musical’s relationship to preceding Broadway theatre and modernist art movements.)
• Timothy P. Kinsella. “Strike Up the Band: War, Satire, Art, and Praxis.” 2005 Proceedings. (A history and analysis of the Gershwin brothers’ 1930 Broadway musical.)
• Candace Pfefferkorn. “America’s Transformation from Vaudeville Theater to Movie House: The Mass Dissemination of Movie Sound Technology.” 2006 Proceedings. (This historical account of the coming of Vitaphone extensively discusses the 1927 movie of The Jazz Singer.)
• Ronald N. Bukoff. “’Here Am I, Your Special Island’: Pan-Asia on the Western Musical Stage.” 2007 Proceedings. (A survey and analysis of images of Asia and Polynesia in American, British, German, and Hungarian musical theatre.)
• Lisa Campbell Albert, Christine Knoblauch-O’Neal, and Annamaria Pileggi. “Musical Theatre as Liberal Inquiry: The Pathway to Craft.” 2007 Proceedings. (Describes in some detail their approach to teaching musical theatre craftsmanship within a liberal arts context.)
• David Goldblatt. “The Spiritual Violist: The Use of Improvisatory Viola in Jewish and Christian Liturgical Contexts.” 2007 Proceedings.( Discusses Fiddler on the Roof in a sub-section called “The Jewish Connection to Stringed Instruments: A Powerfully Socially Constructed Image.”)
• Laura Hanson. “’I Could Have Danced All Night’: The Choreographic Scenery of Oliver Smith.” 2007 Proceedings. (Describes how Smith approached musical theatre set design, using My Fair Lady as a specific, in-depth example.)

Short abstracts (in chronological order):

• Betsy Cooper. Abstract, “The Hollywood Musical and Censorship: The Dancing Body’s Subversion of the Production Code.” 2004 Proceedings.
• Daphne Lamothe. Abstract: “Cultural Memory and the Staging of Blackness.” 2004 Proceedings. (A discussion of Katherine Dunham’s choreography, using the movie musical Stormy Weather as one of two main examples.)
• Barbara Parisi. Abstract: “Critical Reaction to Feminism in the Off-Broadway American Musical Theatre (1970-1990).” 2005 Proceedings.
• Paula Marie Seniors. Abstract: “The Red Moon: The Interconnections Between Theater and History and the Black and Native Americanization Program at Hampton Institute.” 2005 Proceedings.
• Rod Hernandez. Abstract: “The Spoiled Fruit of Carmen Miranda.” 2006 Proceedings.

Michael Garber sends this news:

“Those who have enjoyed Stacy Wolf’s writings on musical theatre, including A Problem Like Maria (2002), might enjoy the online article about her in ATHE News (Feb. 22, 2008), “Scholar Spotlight: Stacy Wolf.” (http://www.athe.org/newsletter/080222-fa2z.html)”

The Mac users of this site may have experienced some truncated pages and weird layouts over the last couple weeks if they visited it using Safari.  I think it should be fixed now, but please do email me (dreside AT umd.edu) if you notice any problems with the site.

Information on this conference in Kansas is at http://arts.ku.edu/%7Esfa/murphy/broadway.shtml

Contact for symposium infomation: Paul Laird – plaird@ku.edu

For info on The Music Man production, directed by John Staniunas: http://www.kutheatre.com/~kutheatr/07-08_season/Murphy50th.shtml

Conference:  The American Musical on Stage & Screen: An Interdisciplinary Extravaganza

UCLA October 12-14, 2007

Keynote speaker: Richard Dyer
Plenary speakers:  David Savran, D.A. Miller, Rose Rosengard Subotnik

From its complex origins on the New York stage, to its lush incarnations in the Hollywood studios, to its rich transformations all over the world, the musical has always been a genre that sought to place the pleasures of the extraordinary next to those of the commonplace. Its wide range of characters and situations has inspired and been inspired by an equally wide range of styles in music, dance, and theater. Operetta and pop ditties, social dance and ballet, vaudevillian shtick and high drama have all found a place on the capacious stage of the musical­a space where differences between styles and media, and among all sorts of people, become visible and audible as they negotiate the terms of their theatrical lives. The passionate struggles on stage and screen to accommodate, to appropriate, to endorse and reject, all find parallels in the intricate and sometimes contradictory responses of the musical’s audiences.

This conference responds to the musical’s variegated multiplicity by bringing together scholars from a multitude of disciplines such as musicology, ethnomusicology, theater, cinema studies, literature, and communications to work towards an understanding of the musical in all its manifestations. The conference and all its events are free.

Organizers:  Raymond Knapp, Mitchell Morris, Stacy Wolf

I have added to the sidebar on the right a list of several libraries and archives that have large collections of musical theatre materials. Please email me (dreside AT umd DOT edu) if you know of others that should be included.

I have registered the domain name musicaltheatrestudies.org for this page. You can now use the URI http://www.musicaltheatrestudies.org to get here.  The original address will still work as long as the list is hosted at the University of Maryland, but the new address may be a little more permanent.